Overview

LifeLink’s R-Alpha-Lipoic Acid clamps down on oxygen-gone-wild

R-Alpha-lipoic acid (R-ALA) is a cofactor in several biochemical
processes in the body, including the process by which energy
is extracted from carbohydrates. It is also an antioxidant that
neutralizes several kinds of oxygen radicals and related molecules
— destructive byproducts of the body’s own normal metabolic
activities. Thanks to its antioxidant properties, R-ALA is nature’s
most powerful defense against oxygen-gone-wild.

R-ALA has been of great interest to medical biologists since it was discovered in the 1950s. The list of applications to which
R-ALA has been successfully applied is a long one, and includes:

Can a single substance really have such a wide range of beneficial effects? Yes it can, because it works at a fundamental
biological level, reducing damage to a wide range of structures inside of cells.

Since ALA competes with vitamin B7 (biotin) for access to certain enzymes and molecular transporters, it would be sensible
to take a biotin supplement if one is supplementing with R-ALA.

Read R-Alpha-lipoic acid Monograph

Alpha-lipoic acid (ALA; also known as ‘thioctic acid’) is a
substance made by cells of many kinds — bacterial, plant, and animal.
There are two forms of ALA: R-ALA and S-ALA — the R-form is the one
found in nature; the S-form results from synthetic production of ALA in
which both forms are made in equal amounts. Supplements are available
containing either the R-form alone or a 50:50 mixture of R- and S-.

ALA’s role in the body

ALA serves as a cofactor in several biochemical processes in the body, including the process by which energy is extracted
from carbohydrates (sugars).1

ALA
is also an antioxidant that neutralizes several kinds of oxygen
radicals and related reactive molecules, including hydroxyl, peroxyl
and superoxide radicals, singlet oxygen, hydrogen peroxide,
hypochlorous acid, peroxynitrite, and nitric oxide. Several of the
body’s other antioxidants can be regenerated by ALA: vitamins C and E
and glutathione.2 These antioxidant properties make ALA nature’s most powerful defense against the ravages of ‘reactive oxygen species’ (ROS).

Reviews

Many
good review articles about ALA are available, but most of them are
under the control of unscrupulous scientific journals which charge
outrageous fees to read them. Of the reviews freely accessible on the
Internet, we recommend the Wikipedia article1, the review on ALA and cardiovascular disease by Wollin and Jones2, the review on ALA and exercise by Sen and Packer,3 all of which are somewhat technical but contain many passages useful and interesting to non-technical readers. The review
on ALA and peripheral neuropathy by Head4 and the excellent review by Kidd5 on neurodegeneration, dementia, and aging are considerably less technical.

What we can’t tell you

In
the U.S. and some other industrialized countries, government agencies
like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have adopted censorship as a
method for intensifying their control over supplement users and their
suppliers. Thus, FDA regulations prohibit us from telling you that any
of our products are effective as medical treatments, even if they are, in fact, effective.

Accordingly, we will limit our discussion of alpha-lipoic acid to a brief summary of relevant research, and let you draw your
own conclusions about what medical conditions it may be effective in treating.

ALA
has been of great interest to medical biologists since it was
discovered in the 1950s. Nearly 2500 scientific articles that deal in
some way with this substance have appeared since then, and numerous
clinical trials have been conducted to test its effects on various
medical conditions. As a result of this attention, the list of
conditions for which ALA has been successfully applied is a long one,
and includes:

It restores vascular function in aged rats to conditions usually seen in younger animals.44

Neuropathy and retinopathy reduction by ALA

Many studies have been conducted to test ALA on diabetes-related neurological conditions, such as neuropathy460 These studies have utilized tissue culture,24 lab animals,61 and humans.23
Many of the older clinical studies used intravenous injections of ALA
solutions; while these experiments have generally shown significant
benefits, they are essentially useless as clinical trials since daily
intravenous treatments are impractical in most cases. The research
money would have been better spent on studying oral ALA treatments. and retinopathy.

Fortunately, more recent studies have tended to use orally dosed ALA — and have also shown significant benefits.

Oral treatment with ALA improved neuropathic symptoms and deficits in a study of 181 diabetic patients who received once-daily
oral doses of 600 mg, 1,200 mg, or 1,800 mg of ALA or placebo for 5 weeks.21,23

ALA for other neurological disorders

Dysregulation of energy production, and inadequate suppression of free radical damage (‘oxidative stress’), have been implicated
as promoters of conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s37, Huntington’s, cognitive aging, and various other neurological and neuromuscular diseases.29 Experiments in tissue culture, lab animals, and in humans have provided evidence that ALA can counteract the promoters of
these ailments and reverse their symptoms:

In mice with a genetic predisposition to develop extreme Alzheimer’s symptoms, treatment with ALA reversed oxidative stress
and improved cognition.31

ALA and its derivatives “improve the age-associated decline of memory”.8

ALA produced significant increases in survival in transgenic mouse models of Huntington’s Disease.38

In mice with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), “administration of lipoic acid in the diet produced a significant improvement
in survival.”39

ALA for cardiovascular conditions

Oxidative
stress is increasingly implicated as a major causative factor in
atherosclerosis. It triggers inflammatory events that generate
peroxides, superperoxides and hydroxyl radicals within the endothelial
tissue of blood vessels. These processes damage the vasculature.2 ALA has been shown to improve endothelial function in the heart arteries of old rats,62 and to “possess a lipid lowering effect… ”63and it “reduced the athero-lesion formation in rabbits fed a high cholesterol diet.”64

Oxidative
stress is also highly correlated to hypertension (high blood pressure).
In experiments with mice, “the development of hypertension could be
either totally prevented or markedly attenuated by chronic treatment
with potent antioxidative therapies such as alpha lipoic acid.”42,43

Use with biotin

Since ALA competes with vitamin B7 (biotin) for access to certain enzymes and molecular transporters, it would be sensible
to take a biotin supplement if one is supplementing with ALA.65 A dose of a few milligrams of biotin per day should be adequate. The biotin should be taken at a different time than the
ALA supplement, since they compete for absorption.

Conclusion

Is alpha-lipoic acid useful for the conditions and purposes mentioned above? We aren’t allowed to tell you, so you should
take a look at some of the references cited here, and then decide for yourself.